The subject matter herein relates generally to semiconductor microelectromechanical (MEMS) based sensor configurations that can be used to detect small forces or flexures generated from mechanical stress, chemo-mechanical stress, thermal stress, electromagnetic fields, and the like. More particularly, the subject matter disclosed herein relates to a method for fabricating a MEMS based sensor, in particular acceleration and pressure sensors with piezoresistive type readout.
Advances in semiconductor microelectronic and MEMS based sensors have served greatly to reduce the size and cost of such sensors. The electrical and mechanical properties of silicon microsensors have been well chronicled. Silicon micromachining and semiconductor microelectronic technologies have blossomed into a vital sensor industry with numerous practical applications. For instance, micromachined silicon pressure sensors, acceleration sensors, flow sensors, humidity sensors, microphones, mechanical oscillators, optical and RF switches an attenuators, microvalves, ink jet print heads, atomic force microscopy tips and the like are widely known to have found their way into various applications in high volume medical, aerospace, industrial and automotive markets. The high strength, elasticity, and resilience of silicon makes it an ideal base material for resonant structures that may, for example, be useful for electronic frequency control or sensor structures. Even consumer items such as watches, scuba diving equipment and hand-held tire pressure gauges may incorporate silicon micromachined sensors.
The demand for silicon sensors in ever expanding fields of use continues to fuel a need for new and different silicon microsensor geometries and configurations optimized for particular environments and applications. Unfortunately, a drawback of traditional bulk silicon micromachining techniques has been that the contours and geometries of the resulting silicon microstructures have been significantly limited by the fabrication methods. For instance, etching silicon structures with conventional etching techniques is constrained, in part, by the crystal orientations of silicon substrates, which limits the geometry and miniaturization efforts of many desired structures.
The increasing use of microsensors to measure pressure or acceleration has spurred the development of small silicon plate structures used, for example, as capacitors and to produce electrostatic forces. For instance, there exist microsensors that measure capacitance using an array of interdigitated polysilicon plates. Similarly, there exist microsensors that produce electrostatic forces using an array of layered plates. Further, there exist microsensors that measure the flexure, or bending, of silicon structures in response to forces such as weight or acceleration.
In applications where it is desired to obtain both pressure and acceleration measurements. In such applications, fabricating both pressure and acceleration sensors on a single chip would be advantageous. As pressure and acceleration sensors are fabricated to smaller dimensions, it is desired to integrate both types of sensors on a single chip and at the same time optimize the material and structural characteristics as well as the methods of manufacturing. It is further desired to manufacture smaller acceleration sensors with high sensitivity and high reliability.
The expanding fields of use of microelectromechanical devices in general, and of accelerometers and pressure sensors in particular, has created a demand for ever smaller devices. Unfortunately, there has been difficulty producing smaller devices that are also highly sensitive to small changes in acceleration or pressure. For example, there has been a need for a smaller accelerometer that combines sufficiently thin flexure structures with a sufficiently large proof mass (or seismic mass) to be responsive to small changes in acceleration. Additionally, because of the small size of the devices and the thin nature of the geometries used, conventional techniques for producing such micromechanical devices risk both breakage during the manufacturing process and potentially diminished reliability in the field.
It would be advantageous to provide one or more sensors fabricated on a single chip that provide the needed performance characteristics with improved manufacturing and operational reliability.